


Dreams

by mrhiddles



Series: Tumblr Fic Prompts [3]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Coming of Age, Dream Sharing, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, First Kiss, M/M, Pre-Thor (2011), Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 14:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16599266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: When Loki leads Thor to the Vault as boys, they come across a strange blue box. Things get complicated when they begin seeing each other's dreams.From a Tumblr prompt fill!





	Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt:  
> In this one they've been close for a long time, able to cross into each other's dreams for years until Thor realizes the root of his affection for his brother has been irreversibly corrupted. Loki finds himself cut off, alone in his own dreams and met with an angry resistance whenever he attempts to reach Thor's. Loki leaves it alone, and time and tragedy pass, and yet and yet- now there something that is crossing over in search of him, unable to hold back, sick with loss and overcome with love. 
> 
> I really love the idea of dream sharing, all Inception's fault. This is more passive in that it is focused on them growing up. Hope you like it anon!

“Come, brother, we shall away to the shadows,” Loki tells him one morning, early, before either of their parents are awake. “I have a mind to lead you to that place you most want.”

Thor sits up, knees knocking together in his excitement. “You can’t mean—”

Loki grins. “I do.”

“The Vault!” Thor half shouts, voice rising dangerously for the time. He hushes himself and giggles as Loki slaps his cheek, nearly twirling away in a mess of green and gold robes. Thor splutters through his laughter.

He has never dressed so fast in his life.

Loki waits, peeking around the banister beside the door to the main hall, eyes trained steady while Thor pulls on one piece of clothing after another.

He only looks away when his brother’s throat is wrapped in the Prince’s gold.

\--

Father would smite them if he knew. Loki knows. Knows he’d be the first to go, and he tells Thor as much.

“You’d likely go out in a puff of green smoke,” Thor laughs. His hand shoots out and squeezes Loki’s arm. “Should the day come he finds what we set out to do this day, hide behind me. I will protect you.”

Loki scoffs and is silent until they reach the Vault.

“Where are the guards,” Thor asks him.

“I spelled them to desire the gardens. They will be there for a long while yet. Go, go!” Loki says, pushing at his shoulders.

In the end, they’d been caught. Heimdall scolded them but spared them the wrath of their father.

But not before they’d come across an eerie thing indeed. Blue and shining and everything they wanted, in their own way. It took not but a moment for either of their clumsy fingers to fiddle with the thing before they’d set it down fast upon hearing determined steps.

Thor does not tell his brother how his head tingles, his heart flutters, his fingers shake. He does not have to.

When he glances over, Loki looks to be experiencing much the same.

\--

They go to bed much like any other night. Loki asleep in moments, Thor clasping fistfuls of the furs shared between them. Loki’s ever-growing legs kick him in his sleep and so he kicks Loki back.

Thor dreams of the Thing. He dreams he is sat at his father’s side, the leaders of Asgard’s nation beaming at him, drinking to his name. Even Odin bows his regal head and Thor wakes smiling.

Loki acts oddly around him all through their morning meal, and again through the afternoon’s.

“Brother, are you ill?” Thor finally asks him.

“No, why?” Loki looks insulted.

“You’re acting strangely. And your name-day is upon us in near a week, I wouldn’t want you to miss what I have planned.”

Loki frowns. “Dreams is all it is. And what have you planned to have maim me this year?”

“What did you dream about?” Thor asks, then, “And I planned on taking you hunting, no new pets. I promised after last time.”

Loki raises a brow. “Maim indeed. And my dreams were nothing but a bore. Politics.”

“Oh,” Thor comments, wondering at his own. He can hardly remember it. “I believe mine were of a similar vein.”

“Huh,” Loki says, and eats his food.

\--

Loki is progressively worse around him as the days pass before his name-day is upon them. Loki avoids him, dodging around potted plants and banisters, one time ducking beneath the edge of a table in the library and Thor believes he has wronged his brother in some way. He starts having nightmares.

He doesn’t see Loki for the two days before the celebrations, and each night he dreams of folly. Loki falling through ceilings. Loki, sinking in the sea. Loki, floating though the black of space.

Thor finally sees Loki that final night. He has slipped back into their shared chambers, a shock really, considering Thor has no idea where he has been sleeping the previous few nights.

He shifts over under the furs and pats the space beside him, eager to reconcile whatever is wrong between them. Loki pads over and slips in beside him with an exhausted sigh, immediately closing his eyes. His pale skin is pallid, a wave of concern flooding through him at the sight.

Loki blinks up at him after a few minutes. He glares.

“You have not been sleeping,” Thor tells him, more a question.

Loki’s glare worsens. “Aye, I’ve not. But you have.”

The words sound bitter and Thor shakes his head, not understanding.

Loki seems to debate with himself before sighing and rolling onto his back.

“I believe us touching that strange blue box has caused us to…well. I have been having the same dreams as you. We are sharing them, I believe.”

Thor sinks down beside his brother, propped on an elbow. “Surely not, for I’ve not seen any but my own.”

Loki looks at him again. “Because I’ve been keeping you from mine. I’ve not slept a moment. Your dreams are hideous. Always losing me. Always sending me off somewhere. And the drowning. What cause have I given you that your subconscious should torture me so terribly and often?”

Thor cannot help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “Loki, I have not been enjoying them. They are a curse upon me each night I am without you beside me.”

Loki looks at him seriously then. He licks his lips and blinks. “Then I shall drop the spell guarding you from mine then. Let you see how it feels.”

Thor smiles. “So you are staying tonight?”

“Honestly, you’re not bothered in the least by what I’ve just told you?”

“It is simply another aspect of your company to share in, brother,” Thor tells him, and Loki gapes.

“Foolish, dimwitted, _boy_ —” Loki starts.

But Thor is hugging him, and soon enough has Loki laughing too.

\--

On Loki’s name-day, he downs his first boar, and the four of them feast well that night.

Frigga gifts Loki a loom of his own.

Odin tells his boys they are to move into their own rooms, for it is time to grow into the men they are destined to be.

Thor accepts it with a nod, willing himself not to argue like he so desperately wants, and he does not know how Loki looks so, so…unaffected about it all. Thor cannot help but let slip a few tears when he lays down that night, on Loki’s side. He can still smell the scent of his brother’s hair on the pillows.

But when he sleeps it is not his own dreams he sees. He knows that. They are Loki’s. And they are as sad as Thor feels.

\--

Thor meets Sif after he reaches an age. The age, as his father not-so-gently reminds him one night when they feast, surrounded by friends and warriors alike, which one begins courting for marriage. It is rarer these days for his family to eat together, just the four of them alone, rarer still for talk or the future and things he has no wish of doing at so young an age.

Loki is often quiet through these dinners. But he rages in his dreams. He dreams of power. Of revenge. Sometimes even of a future Thor cannot see, but causes him a strange sense of nostalgia all the same when he wakes.

He often finds his brother on mornings after a particularly bad dream, hoping to soothe him in some way.

It is the afternoon during sparring when Sif shoves Thor onto his back with her shield and kisses him, that Thor first feels some guilt from the action. He isn’t sure why. But it has him leaning away from Sif when she goes in for a second one.

Loki usually watches from the sidelines during these bouts of training, often goading Thor more than anything else, always pleased to be the least helpful he can be. But when Thor looks up, he only sees his brother’s back retreating towards the gardens.

Thor calls it a day, clapping Sif’s arm after she helps him up, and goes after him. 

\--

Thor finds Loki on their mother’s marble bench. Ivy crawls along the carved designs of its surface and he dances deft fingers over the delicate curves. They bend to life, edging along wherever he sees fit to lead them.

“Will you wed her?” Loki asks him without looking up. Thor sits beside him.

“Sif is but a friend.”

Loki hums. “Friends. Has a more intimate meaning than I’ve been led to believe.”

“Have you never—”

“Kissed anyone?” Loki finishes for him. Then, quietly, “Of course not.”

He gets up and leaves before Thor has a chance to answer the peculiar bite in his tone.

\--

Thor dreams of kissing Loki that night. He wakes, sweating. Hard. He looks down in something close to horror and pleads to his father’s fathers that Loki has not seen his dream too.

 _Just the once_ , Thor whispers to the silence of his dark room, _he need not see every dream, surely._

It is not the first time either of them have shared a dream of intimacy, but never has either dreamed of their brother in their arms, the very source of the intimacy indeed.

Loki is tight-lipped all morning. And well into the night he has a furrow in his brow that tells Thor he did see. He did.

Thor stays up as late as he can. He bathes in scalding water, biting his finger until it bleeds. He trims the ends of his long hair. He jogs around his rooms. He eats. He practices the brutal swings of his sword, shadowing the movements he’s been taught. He tugs a hand quick over himself, spilling hard into his hand. Nothing settles his restless limbs.

Then, then. He lets himself imagine it. Loki can only see his dreams. He cannot see his present thoughts and feelings. He cannot feel the guilt Thor had during training. He cannot feel the dip in his chest when Loki confessed he has never had a kiss before.

He passes his fingers over his lips and thinks of his brother. Wonders what his would feel like against his own. Wonders where he’d put his hands, if they’d wander or grasp, or lie still. Wonders with a shock if Loki would accept him his perversity, or never speak to him again.

Thor gasps at the very thought, shouting out in the dark. He despises the idea of it. That his brother ignore him until the end of their days. He knows his brother is just dramatic enough to do it.

But worse, the loss of Loki’s love for him, his brother in all his hostility, affection, trust, and fears—if Thor lost that, he knows he’d lose himself.

And so he pushes the thought away. Knows it’s as wily as Loki’s very nature. And he knows how to handle wily. He knows when to cater to it and when to put it away.

In this, this perverse dream of a dream—he puts it away. Far, far away.

\--

Loki approaches him after two days of silence. He has not seen any of Loki’s dreams and he is grateful for it.

But the moment he sees his brother, he wonders if Loki has simply enacted the same spell he’d first employed to shield Thor from his mind. He has a fleeting moment of panic before Loki collapses beside him on the lounge, legs up on the table in front of them. He kicks at a bowl of apples.

Thor waits.

“I had the most ghastly dream last night. I am surprised you did not come knocking down my door.”

Thor accepts it as the apology he knows it to be.

Or is it forgiveness?

He does not know which. He does not ask.

\--

His fears are soothed the following night when he sees Loki dream of picking apples in an orchard. They all shine gold and in it, he wields an axe, protecting his orchard from intruders.

He tells Loki he is proud of him, teasing, and Loki just smiles. Something odd curls at the end of it, eyes strained. He looks searching but Thor laughs it off, knowing it must simply be a trick of the light.

Loki dreams of Thor wielding a hammer the next night and it feels right. He wakes feeling giddy.

\--

A year passes and time has seen Thor gain and lose in equal measure. He journeys more. He sees Loki less. He gains a hammer, indeed; vibrant, wild thing that she is, Mjolnir. Loki mocks him relentlessly, ruthlessly for months on end when he first lifts it and he cannot fathom why Loki should be envious of such a thing when he has such remarkable power to speak of for himself.

Loki’s blathering insults only cease when Thor tells him as much. He nods, stunned into blissful silence.

Thor leaves on a quest in Alfheim the next day and he doesn’t see Loki for months more.

It does not feel like it, with all of Loki’s dreams he is privy to enjoying.

\--

Thor is careful to take Loki out of his box when he is alone, stuck in his thoughts. He has not had a dream since that first night, of the kiss. He plans to keep it that way.

Only allows himself to draw pleasure from his own skin when he is bathing, or when he wakes. It is easier.

\--

Loki is in his chambers when he returns, covered in blood and dirt. He drops Mjolnir on the table, nerves still singing from the fight.

“Thor,” Loki says.

Thor nods, swallowing thickly. His brother is dressed in his night clothes, thin in the half-light of dusk.

“I did not mean to disturb you. I’d hoped to be cleaned up before anyone saw me,” Thor tells him, always turning for the baths.

Loki grabs his wrist, too tight.

“Carnage suits you,” Loki laughs. He lets Thor’s wrist drop to cross his arms. He almost looks—

“Are you well, brother?” Thor asks him, for Loki looks shaky.

Loki blinks. “Aye, have I any cause not to be?”

Thor turns and places the back of his hand to Loki’s forehead. “You’ve no fever. How strange. Shall I call Eir?”

Loki slaps his hand away. “I’m not ill, you baboon. I’m nervous. It’s nerves.” He looks put out by the admission.

Thor unclasps his cloak, letting it fall at his feet. “Why are you nervous, Loki?”

Something dark stirs within him as Loki rakes his eyes slow over his torso, his face.

 _Stop_ , Thor tells himself. _Save it for the baths_.

“What did I dream about last night?” Loki asks, barking the question at him.

The questions catches him off guard. He pulls off his boots as he recalls it.

“You dreamt I was a fish in a bowl. You overfed me and I died. And you kept yelling at me for it.”

Loki snorts, hand coming up to cover his mouth. Then his eyes and the longer it goes on, the more Thor suspects his brother to be crying.

He reaches forward and pushes Loki’s hand away, and sure enough, there are tears glistening in his green eyes.

“I’ve not known your mind for what seems like years, brother,” Loki tells him tearfully, sounding more tired than he’s ever been. “I know not why. It confounds, endlessly. I’ve not managed to find an answer to it anywhere. No book, no matter how old, talks of sharing dreams, nor how to fix them if they themselves do ail.”

Thor swallows hard. He had hoped, pleaded that his dreams not pass through the careful veil that had been strung between them all these years, but never had he known it worked.

And then he realizes that Loki has been gifting him with all manner of ambition his mind deigns to dream up and has not been spared a single thought from Thor’s.

 _How lonely_ , he thinks, heavy-hearted in a way he hasn’t felt since his youth.

“I’ve been selfish,” Thor says, grabbing at Loki’s shoulders. “I’ve been a coward.”

“The last dream I saw of yours,” Loki starts. “I thought it was a lie, I’d woken so quickly from it. “A cruel trick conjured by my own wicked heart.”

“What?” Thor asks, throat suddenly very dry.

“I have never said it, have I?” Loki asks, soft. “I’ve never let you know how much I do adore you. Look up to you, in all your battle-glory and idiocy in kind. How much I do love you, Thor.”

The words sting. And it has Loki leaping from the box Thor has shoved him in for so long, every secret, shameful desire thrown bare to the front of his mind.

“What are you saying, Loki?” he asks, because he needs to be sure. Needs to know.

Loki shakes his head, no, and leans forward to press warm lips to Thor’s own. Thor inhales sharp, shoulders gone tense.

“I am saying,” Loki begins, hands going to undo the ties holding his bracers together, “That I would have your dreams again.”

“Only my dreams?” Thor asks him, breathless.

“Not only,” Loki tells him, smiling.


End file.
